I Thought I Knew You
by Timeloopy
Summary: Libby watched Hugo as he passed through her days. He was so alive and she felt so dead. Did he even notice her creeping around the edges of his world? Did he realize that she wasn't always this broken?


_**Disclaimer: I don't usually remember to put this but obviously I don't lay claim to any characters, settings, etc.**_

***

There he was again across the courtyard.

He was smiling.

She wanted to smile. Oh, how she wanted to smile. It had been so long since she'd been able to force even a fake smile. How had her life spiraled so far out of control so quickly?

Of course, he was also talking to someone who wasn't there – but in her current state that didn't bother her too much. She'd love to have someone she felt like talking to – even if they weren't real. So, she watched him with envy across the courtyard wishing she had the nerve to stand up and go talk to him. He was so alive and bouncy and full of energy – like an overgrown Tigger.

And she was Eeyore.

There was a time when the thought would have made her smile. But not today – not for a long, long time.

***

_She didn't like basketball. Not really. She'd always hung out with the yachting crowd. Polo matches. Horse races. Casinos. _

_And she'd been happy with all that until she lost David. As long as David was by her side, she'd thought those things made her happy. She had fun. She laughed. She smiled. She loved._

_Without David, it had all seemed so hollow. So pointless. Her friends had been supportive at first and they'd tried to draw her out._

_She'd gone to the same parties. The same matches. The same glitzy glamorous clubs._

_But now it had all seemed so dark. No matter how brightly the lights shined, she felt like she was being weighed down by the shadows._

_Slowly, they'd withdrawn from her. Elizabeth had gone from the first name on the guest list – to the middle – to the "well, I'd hate to hurt her feelings and you know she won't come any way"._

_She found herself spending more and more time alone in the big house with all the beautiful things she and David had picked out together. And at first, she'd drawn some comfort from those things._

_Not necessarily the big purchases – the furniture or the paintings or the sculptures. It was the small things – the kitschy silver souvenir spoons he'd insisted they buy wherever they went. _

"_Why?" she'd asked laughing._

"_Because it's what you do," he'd explained and rolled his eyes. "My mother has one of these for every state and most of your major amusement parks."_

"_Your mother?" Libby had laughed at the thought of her carefully coiffed mother-in-law walking through touristy souvenir shops in her chanel suits with her chauffeur in tow._

"_We didn't always have money," David had said with a wistful smile. "We were real, once."_

"_You seem pretty real to me, now." Libby's brow had furrowed and David had taken his finger and smoothed it with his gentle touch._

"_You make me feel real again." David pulled her into his arms and without a glance at the shop owner, dipped his head to kiss his new wife. "This is real – me and you. I love you, Libby."_

"_I love you, too," she'd breathed as he pulled away to study the display of silver spoons again._

"_This one?" he asked holding up one of the spoons that all looked pretty much alike to her._

"_I love it," she'd said and meant it. Or maybe she just loved being here with him, being held in his arms, and feeling real._

_The day her parents had her taken away she was sitting in the floor of her designer kitchen with the spoons laid out all around her. They'd traveled so much. Every spoon had a story. _

_As her parents had hauled her to her feet with tears in their eyes, she'd clutched at the symbols of everything that had been real to her. And she shed a tear for every spoon that fell from her hands as they restrained her and wrestled her to the waiting van._

_***_

He made the basket. He always seemed to make the basket.

Buried deep inside her was a girl longing to jump up and cheer. Somewhere under all the medication and all the grief and depression, a woman was letting out a wolf whistle that would have shocked her uptight socialite mother. Underneath layer after layer of indifference that she'd placed between herself and the world, she was turning cartwheels.

But on the outside, she sat at the edge of the gym on the bleachers. Her head leaned against the painted cinder block wall and she chewed on the end of her dull auburn hair.

Vaguely, she realized she hadn't let it grow out this color since high school – except for once or twice on a whim and she'd always gone back blonde within a few weeks. Her hairdresser would be mortified if she could see her now, she supposed.

Her mother was certainly mortified. She didn't even come to visit any more.

Libby chewed the end of her hair and watched Hugo Reyes race around the court making shot after shot. He had a lot of grace for such a large man.

Grace and vitality.

It was the vitality that drew her to him. To be that alive – even if people thought you were crazy. She felt dead except when she was watching him.

He didn't seem to notice her. He was busy carrying on a conversation with his imaginary best friend.

So, she sat at the edge of the gym and she watched while the woman buried deep inside her scratched and gnawed at her – trying to get out.

***

_Before things got so bad that she'd been locked away from prying eyes, she'd tried to pull herself together._

_One day she'd woken up from her pallet on the floor beside the mahogany four-poster bed and noticed that the sun was shining and there wasn't a cloud in the sky. David would have said this was a great day for sailing, she thought to herself._

_Instead of wallowing in self-pity, she stood up and went to the shower. She kicked aside the gray sweatpants she'd stepped into for God knows how many days now. Idly, she thought that it was probably time to wash them. She twisted the brass knob on the custom built shower with three nozzles that encased her body in a warm cocoon of water._

"_You think it's too decadent?" Libby had said to David as they'd circled the designer model in the showroom._

"_Yeah," David said as he stepped inside the booth inlaid with custom porcelain tile. "Yeah, it's entirely to decadent. Sinful probably."_

_He held out his hand and pulled her into the model and they wrapped their arms around each other's waists while David tilted his head back and admired the showerheads that protruded overhead._

"_Do real people have showers like this?" she asked with a twinkle in her eye._

_David seemed hypnotized by this plumbing marvel._

"_Can you imagine making love in here?" he'd said instead and lowered his gaze to meet hers. The lust in his eyes warmed her core._

"_So, they're coming to install it when?" Libby asked._

"_Let's go find out," David said, planting a quick kiss on her cheek and dragging her along as he rushed to find the salesman._

_She shook her head to clear the memory. She had to stop living in the past. She needed to focus on the now._

_She shut off the water and stepped out through the steam to riffle through the cabinet for a towel. The towel was thick and soft and she forced herself to relax as she wiped the dampness from her skin._

_The stubble on her legs caught at the towel and she opened the drawer to look for a razor – finding none in hers, she steeled herself and felt only the slightest qualm as she lifted the unopened package of Bics from David's drawer._

"_These razors are awful," she'd said once as he'd picked them off the shelf at Wal-mart. David loved Wal-mart. He said it was where real people shopped. She'd seen people at Wal-mart that she hoped weren't real, but she humored him. _

"_They're on sale!" he'd beamed._

"_David, we don't have to buy what's on sale. Get a decent razor."_

_He'd ignored her. "I can't wait to tell my mom about this. My dad uses these razors – she can stock up."_

_Libby had only shaken her head. This mental picture David had of his mother didn't match up at all with the woman she knew. The woman they had dinner with once a week was poised and carefully dressed though always warm and welcoming. _

_Now, Libby swallowed and ripped the package open. She took the bright yellowish orange razor in her hand and stepped back into the shower to make herself presentable. She could do this. Really she could._

_After much effort and several lectures to herself on staying focused, Libby was fairly satisfied with what she saw in the mirror. The circles under her eyes were disguised as well as she could manage with the concealer in her makeup kit. Her hair was neatly arranged though no amount of product seemed to be able to coax it to shine. She was too thin, and her clothes hung on her in a way that wasn't entirely flattering. But she couldn't do much about that today._

_That was the first day she went wandering. She simply wandered the streets and the shops watching other people living their lives. Wondering if they were taking those lives as much for granted as she'd taken hers before David's departure._

_She saw a young girl, maybe twenty, holding up a dress with pure longing on her face._

"_It would be great on you," she said trying out her voice. It had been a while since she'd spoken aloud except on the phone and her voice sounded loud to her in her ears._

"_Yes," the girl said with a wry smile. "But I really shouldn't. I paid off my credit card. New Year's Resolution, you know. And I don't have the money for it."_

_Libby extended her hand, "May I?"_

_The girl handed over the dress and Libby turned the hangar this way and that. The green chiffon swished a little at the bottom as she turned it back and forth. She looked back at the girl and noticed that the dress just matched her eyes. She made a decision. _

"_Come with me," she said and made her way toward the cashier._

"_Wait, what are you doing?" the girl asked nervously. Libby could see that she thought this was getting a bit weird._

"_You should have it. Don't worry. There are no strings. I've got plenty of money and no one to spend it on. Let me do this for you. It would be a favor to me."_

_The girl still looked reluctant._

"_Please? Just, let me do something nice for a stranger."_

_The girl neither acquiesced or objected so Libby laid the dress on the counter and whipped out her own credit card. She paid for the dress and then pressed it into the girl's arms._

"_Just one thing. Promise me you'll have fun when you wear it."_

_The girl looked a bit dazed but she nodded._

_Libby went home feeling the closest thing she'd felt to peace in a long time._

_After that, she did it over and over again. She bought someone a television. . .she paid the checks of everyone in a café she stopped in forlunch. . .she overheard a lady on the bus talking about having her electricity turned off and she handed the woman five one-hundred dollar bills and walked away._

_It made her feel good for a little while – shut out the darkness for a little while – made her feel real. Well, almost real._

_And no one really cared. Not until the day she gave the boat away. That was the thing that got their attention._


End file.
